In my last order of hog casings, most of my 36mm casings turned out to be 40mm+!

Since most of these are going to be sold in fixed price meals by my customers, this 25% increase in size is really not something they can deal with. They want a 5" or 8" natural cased sausage they can put on the menu for the same price every week, and not something that costs them 25% more or is shorter and fatter to maintain the same weight.

Though I filled out some retail orders with these behemoths which are sold by weight, I am curious how you guys handle this.

I know these are natural products and there will be variation in size, but this one caught me off guard with such a large variation.

I'm coming from the other side. I was mostly getting 42mm casing as that's all my supplier carried. I found that I wanted a longer sausage for my application and was willing to sacrifice diameter. I contacted the packer/manufacturer who was happy to get me in touch with an alternate supplier who got me what I was looking for. I know that you may not have a whole lot of flexibility based on your location but it may be worth looking at alternate suppliers if any are available.

You can just about make any sausage in any sized casing, what it then comes down to is marketing. Using the aforementioned 42mm casings I made brats, hot dogs, breakfast sausages, etc etc etc. Using the larger than normal casings has kinda become my schtick and customers love the over-sized sausages (might be an American thing now that I think about it)....

how about changing yr supplier to China? China is the largest casing production and we can have supply natural hog casings, sheep casings and collagen casings. My email is casingtoy@126.com and feel free to let us know your requirement.

casingtony wrote:how about changing yr supplier to China? China is the largest casing production and we can have supply natural hog casings, sheep casings and collagen casings. My email is casingtoy@126.com and feel free to let us know your requirement.